Twain was a nice guy. I am, too. I say shit about Glenn Reynolds, which he clearly don't appreciate, but it's not to hurt his feelings. And I do think about his feelings. But neither he, or Pajamas Media, or any one or anything is above critique. He may be a professor, but he still does shit that's stupid - galling even. Does that mean I don't like him? Nah. For me it means he ought to man up, pay attention and even work with me. We're all better for criticism:

I wouldn't have gotten a (better) handle on my PTSD without him forcefully telling me to chill and look at myself one day.

I do like Twain, one of our greatest wits and this won't change my opinion of him. But saying mean things about people behind their backs but not to their faces doesn't make you tender hearted. He liked to plant bombs but didn't want to be there when the bomb exploded as he might suffer damage.

Twain was 100% American of Scots Irish descent and as smart as any man who ever lived. Like Palin he would be a prime target to be slandered by the elites in today's media as a country boy with no education. The more things change, the more they stay the same. He ended up in Connecticut living alongside the elite Bush Family. He was the irrepressible force of populism in his day.

Twain was a radical artist but a conventional thinker. Hemingway said that all of American literature descends from one book, Huckleberry Finn, not because of the thoughts in it, which are standard enlightened, because Twain flung open the doors and windows and let the light and air of demotic speech into the hot house of 19th century American "culture."

For example Clemens writes about ex-actor John Malone(of the Edwin Boothe company)a ne'er-do-well who moved on the outer edges of Clemenses social circle.

"Midway through the dinner I got a glimpse through the pantry door of that pathetic figure John Malone. There he was, left out, of course. Sixty-five years old; and his history may be summarized --his history for fifty years--in those two words, two eloquent words --"left out"."

Later, after discussing Malone with a friend and then finding that he'd died the next day:

"So there is another surprise, you see. While Twitchell and I were talking about John Malone he was passing from this life. His disappointments are ended. At last he is not "left out". It was a long wait, but the best of all fortunes is his at last."

Such material would have been scandalous in Clemenses day, but wouldn't make the cut for late night standup today.

"Like Palin he would be a prime target to be slandered by the elites in today's media as a country boy with no education."

Oh for fuck's sake. We get that you like Sarah Palin, but to attempt a comparison of any kind between her and Mark Twain betrays absolute bankruptcy of sense.

Palin is denigrated because she has never said anything smart or interesting or thoughtful, never had an interesting thought, yet her admirers receive her banal anti-thoughts as if they were draughts of cool water in a wasteland of drought, and one can see she thinks she's pretty damn keen herself. Twain/Clemons, were he alive today, would be read and admired just as he was in his lifetime, because he actually had interesting thoughts, was a sharp observer of humanity and human nature, and he wrote with humor and intelligence and freshness of expression.

What Robert Cook said...except the part about my moral bankruptcy...I may be morally insolvent on Friday nights, but that is a long way from morally bankrupt. I love Mark Twain. And I love Sarah Palin. See?